Only 364 chopping days till Christmas

Is scavenging timber for a wood-burning stove the answer to soaring energy prices? Caroline Scott is among the converted

Caroline and her husband, James, prepare to tackle more free fuel (Paul Vicente)

This winter, suburbia has been alive with the sound of axes falling on wood.
Men — and, on my street in southwest London, it’s mostly men — are stepping
off the 6.27 from Waterloo, shedding their laptops and office suits and
taking up their chain saws to hack up logs and reclaimed wood — in fact,
anything and everything that will burn. It’s partly a kneejerk reaction to
rocketing fuel bills and a desire to live sustainably, partly a return to
manliness. Because, while my husband and I divide almost every other
domestic task I can think of — shopping, cooking, cleaning, the loathsome
business of making five packed lunches every day — I wouldn’t dream of
stepping near his power tools.

Like most townies, we’ve endlessly discussed moving to the countryside, as the
things James loves — chopping, building, planting — are not best suited to a
smallish back garden. His image of “the country”, however,